Wells

Preliminary report of the Amicus Curiae on baolis/stepwells in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, 28/08/2023

Preliminary report of the Amicus Curiae, Swati Mehta in the matter of Priyanshu Gupta Vs State of Madhya Pradesh dated 28/08/2023. The Original Application was registered by the NGT by taking suo moto cognizance based on a letter petition dated April 12, 2023 pertaining to several water bodies (baolis or …

That sinking feeling

Today, all wells have fallen to disuse and are capped with iron shields. A pipeline fetches water from 250 km away, feeding the network of taps (below: a public tap, with customary Venetian craft). But the water bill is steep. And what if water stops coming from 250 km away? …

Perturbing

nearly a month after the tsunami hit India's eastern coast, some districts of Andhra Pradesh are reporting incidents of water appearing in wells that had dried up long ago. The first such occurrence was sighted recently in Mukundapur village of Ranga Reddy district, where about 30 centimetre deep water seeped …

Bacteria eat sulphate

during a recent study, researchers from the us -based University of Illinois have found that adding a commonly found mineral in water contaminated by arsenic is a quick and cost-effective way to remove the toxic chemical. Water tainted by arsenic threatens the health of millions of people, mainly in Bangladesh …

Well connected

geologists have found that there are sudden and pronounced changes in the water level of wells in the Thar Desert before an earthquake. The observation raises the possibility of using wells to predict the seismic activity. The geologists, D Muralidharan, Rolland Andrade and U Satyanarayana of the Hyderabad-based National Geophysical …

Water riddles

I travelled in Kerala last fortnight, seeking answers. I wanted to know what government was doing to meet the drinking water needs of people in this wet-drought state. Searching in villages and academic papers, an anomalous statistic caught my eye. According to 1999 estimations of the National Sample Survey Organisation …

Well wishing

arsenic tainted well water could be killing 3,000 people each year in Bangladesh; digging some wells deeper could save 70 per cent of the victims. These are the findings of a study by geochemists from the us-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit). "Hardly any reliable data exist about the impacts …

Nitrates in Karnataka wells

yet another case of contamination of water has surfaced. The southwestern regional office of the Central Ground Water Board (cgwb) recently released a report of the water quality study conducted in 1300 national hydrograph wells (where water samples are monitored) in Karnataka. The concentration of nitrates is found to vary …

Not testing the waters

victims of arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh have taken the British Geological Survey (bgs) to court. They contend that bgs did not test for arsenic in the water of wells funded by a project which had partners such as the United Nations Children's Fund (unicef) and the World Bank from 1983 …

Coping with drought

I travel in drought-hit Rajasthan. I want to see, and record. What does really happen when an area is hit by drought? It doesn't rain over Rajasthan the way it used to. Less rainfall has led to a drop in groundwater levels. This year, Rajasthan got 208 mm rain. That's …

What goes down must come up

in february 1999, a Delhi newspaper reported that a tubewell sunk to a depth of about 200 feet (61 metres) by Suruchi Dyeing Udyog, a factory south of the G T Road in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, was yielding yellow-coloured water. Arun Agarwal, the factory’s owner, was quoted in the report …

Disasters in the making?

dte reporters met the pollution control authorities in some industrial areas of the country, spoke to the local people about the effects of pollution and met representatives of the civil society to gauge the extent of the problem on the socio-economic level. They also got in touch with industrialists, but …

Tankers from hell

For the people of Patancheru and Bollaram in Medak district, what goes around comes around. But with an evil twist. At night, tankers are used to carry effluents to the neighbouring state Karnataka, which is about 25 km away, or to far-off places for dumping. The same tankers supply drinking …

Killers at large

There are several industrial units in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh (AP) that have directly or indirectly polluted groundwater. AP Pollution Control Board (APPCB) officials reveal that Reliance Cellulose is releasing effluents with very high chemical oxygen demand levels into a nearby stream. Standard Organics of Patancheru used to pump …

Double whammy

Adulteration of milk is not a new problem in the town of Bulandshahar in western Uttar Pradesh (UP). However, it is leading to another type of slow poisoning. Local people complain that dairies pump their effluents containing urea and other chemical additives into the ground. "Some workers from a dairy …

How did it go wrong?

"Industrialists believe it is cheaper to purchase the regulators than abide by the regulations,' says K Purushotham Reddy of the Hyderabad-based ngo Citizens Against Pollution. "If I am not wrong, more than 90 per cent of gpcb officials are corrupt. In the present circumstances, only God can save Gujarat from …

We need a different approach

How serious is the groundwater pollution problem in India? Groundwater pollution is very difficult to evaluate as till now, there is no nationwide survey or study of it except the few studies done by CPCB. On that basis I can say that it is very serious and needs special attention. …

No way back

Once polluted by industry, groundwater is very difficult to clean up. This is the lesson learnt from the Bichhri experience. Situated about 12 km from Udaipur, the groundwater of Bichhri, spread over an area of 300 hectares, is stark red. And as the groundwater moves naturally to other aquifers, it …

Manimata and mercury: the rude awakening

It was like the loss of innocence, one of the first incidents to open humankind's eye to what industrial pollution can do. One of the earliest tragedies caused by chemical pollution was the painful death and disability that afflicted thousands of people living around Japan's Minamata Bay in the 1950s-60s. …

Ulcerous!

not very long ago, scientists disproved the widely held belief that it is not curry, worry and hurry that cause stomach ulcers but the wily bacterium Helicobacter pylori . This germ has since been implicated in a wide variety of gastrointestinal diseases from stomach inflammation to ulcers and even cancer. …

Well of death

TOXIC fumes from a well claimed five lives at Dichaun Kalan village in west Delhi on July 11. The first casualty was a villager who climbed down the well to install a pump in an attempt to solve the village's water shortage. The other four died one by one, trying …

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